Area Guides

Iconic streets: Gloucester Road

This half-mile stretch of SW7 cannot claim to be the grandest nor the most cutting edge, but its wide variety of housing stock and neighbouring streets and sights see Gloucester Road appeal to those seeking a (relatively) cut-price Kensington.

At first glance

As you travel north from where Gloucester Road begins at Old Brompton Road in the heart of South Kensington to its final destination shortly before Hyde Park, you pass leafy squares and neighbourhood pubs, small shopping parades and mews streets – and, importantly, the Tube station.

Broadly, the north end is more residential and the south more touristy. And due in part to Second World War bomb damage, there is architectural diversity throughout, including family houses of varying styles, large mansion blocks and long terraces of tall stucco-fronted houses that have almost entirely been converted into flats. There is also a stretch of Grade II-listed properties, from number 2 to 32 and the Gloucester Arms pub at number 34.

“South Kensington is renowned for having the widest cross-section of property types and it is still held up to be flat land, with most of its big houses chopped up into apartments,” comments Guy Meacock of Savills’ buying agency Prime Purchase.

“Not many people would choose to live on Gloucester Road itself, as with any busy street in London, but just off it there are notable addresses where you can pay double-digit millions for a family house,” adds Meacock, citing Queen’s Gate Terrace and Elvaston Place as “desirable little spots” on the eastern side. “This chimes with the idea of an urban village with really nice restaurants and cafés and a Partridges supermarket,” he adds.

To these sought-after off-shoots, Patch Lister from Savills Chelsea would add Harrington Gardens and Collingham Gardens – “desirable oases of calm with George and Peto architecture,” says Lister, referring to the late 19th-century houses set around communal gardens and designed by architects Ernest George and Harold Peto who were inspired by Flemish and German housing. A two-bed flat in one such period building in Harrington Gardens is currently on sale for £1.875m and a very cool modernised one-bedroom flat in Collingham Gardens for £695,000, both through Knight Frank.

For neighbouring desirability, Laurence Lai of Knight Frank South Kensington, adds Hereford Square and Cornwall Gardens. He mentions that Gloucester Road’s southern stretch, between Old Brompton Road and Harrington Gardens/Stanhope Gardens has the largest houses, which form part of the Hereford Square Estate. “No.143 sold in May this year for £10.9m, which was £2,311 per sq ft,” says Lai.

“The vast majority of properties on Gloucester Road are apartments and due to the size of the road, stock is always readily available. There are no ‘typical’ apartments and there is a good mixture of one- to four-bedroom flats,” Lai adds.

With such diverse stock comes a great variation in property values too – even within one building. “It is very address-specific, so you can’t generalise,” says Guy Meacock. “There is a huge difference between a street just off Gloucester Road, such as Southwell Gardens or Queen’s Gate Gardens and a first-floor flat in Cornwall Gardens, because some conversions are more appealing than others,” Meacock comments. If pushed to put an average price on the street, he says: “We get very little for less than £1,500 per sq ft, so broadly the average is £1,700-£1,800 per sq ft. But we rarely see big prices achieved. Houses are slightly cheaper than the best flats because the latter are rarer.”

And who does Gloucester Road attract? Well that, predictably, is diverse too. “Local residents range from students at Imperial College to affluent professionals and families – some of whom live outside London but own a pied à terre in South Kensington,” says Foxtons South Kensington’s Felicity Walker.

Schools are a draw too – not just the French Lycée, but the prep school Thomas’s Kensington and Queen’s Gate School, whose famous old girls include Nigella Lawson, Vanessa Redgrave and HRH The Duchess of Cornwall. John D Wood is selling a two-bed flat in a stucco building on Queen’s Gate for £1.295m.

Why iconic?

In the 150 years since this stretch was known as Hogs Moor surrounded by market gardens, Gloucester Road and its immediate surroundings have notched up some famous names. The author J M Barrie lived at number 133 and used the top floor balcony as inspiration for Peter Pan. Poet T S Eliot was the warden of Gloucester Road’s St Stephen’s Church for 25 years and lived in nearby Grenville Place in the 1930s.

Among those who have lived on Gloucester Road’s side streets are the writers Beatrix Potter and Virginia Woolf, the painter Francis Bacon and the comedian Benny Hill. “Adele has a home in the area too,” comments Felicity Walker. “It’s hard to imagine that this area was farmland until relatively recently, but it wasn’t until the Great Exhibition of 1851 in nearby Hyde Park that Gloucester Road and the immediate streets around it were developed into residential areas due to their proximity to the National History Museum,” she adds. High-ranking lawyers and soldiers fresh from colonial duties in India made their home in its surrounding mews streets.

The area’s appeal was hugely enhanced by the opening of Gloucester Road Tube station in 1868. “It is on three Tube lines, which is unusual and offers great accessibility to central London and great routes out of the capital west towards Heathrow. It is popular with an international demographic because it is so accessible,” comments Guy Meacock.

Drawing the French contingent, specifically, is the nearby Lycée Français Charles de Gaulle – which has lead to the opening of French restaurants, bakeries and bookshops. In the 2011 census, most of the street’s non-British residents were found to be French or American.

But the area is on every overseas visitor’s map due to its location in the heart of ‘Albertopolis’, whose institutions include the great museums (V&A, Natural History Museum and Science Museum), and such cultural and educational landmarks including the Royal Albert Hall, Imperial College London, the Royal College of Music and the Royal Geographical Society. You are also a stroll away from the retail offerings of South Kensington and Kensington High Street.

Gloucester Road’s “high turnover and transient nature” says Laurence Lai, means it lacks the wealth of local institutions you find in more village-like parts of Kensington & Chelsea. Some long-loved independents have gone, too, such as The Gloucester Road Bookshop at number 123, which is now The European Bookshop. “A sign of the changing population,” says Rollo Miles of John D Wood & Co, though he points out that some local institutions have survived, including Da Mario, “one of Princess Diana’s favourite local restaurants” and The Invisible Menders “has been there for decades and does alterations for the great and good”. The aisles of the local Waitrose, near the Tube, are also awash with famous faces.

The newest addition of note to the street is ice cream parlour Four Winters. Also worth a visit is the Bombay Brasserie, which has been opposite Gloucester Road station since 1982, and Jakobs, a family-run Greek deli at 20 Gloucester Road, which features live music three times a week.